


The Writer, the Silence and the Shadows

by faerae42



Category: Original Work
Genre: Character Study, Female Protagonist, Gen, Original Character(s), POV Original Female Character, Uncertainty, sinister shadows, unnamed Protagonist - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-08
Updated: 2019-12-08
Packaged: 2021-03-07 09:27:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21719158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/faerae42/pseuds/faerae42
Summary: A woman walks through the nighttime streets and finds herself pursued by a sinister force.





	The Writer, the Silence and the Shadows

**Author's Note:**

> This is a short story I initially developed for a high school writing class and reworked years later. Hope you enjoy it.

She walks down the street at four in the morning, no idea of where she is going, only of what she has left behind. She has just left her husband, and the ring she has worn for eight long years now sits in her pocket together with the lint and dust. The marriage had probably been a bad idea from the start, but Jack had loved her so deeply that she had thought it could work.

She now realizes that she probably never really loved him at all, and had only really been in love with the idea of the perfect, fairy tale romance, like the ones she read in stories as a child. She had tried her hand at writing romance at first, but found everything she wrote came off as hollow and fake, so she turned to writing horror instead. She supposes it made sense that she could never write romance, after all, how can you write about love if you’ve never really known what it was.

She wonders if it’s her fault. Maybe if she was just a bit more willing to open up, or take risks, or something, anything, maybe things could have gone better. But instead she kept putting things off, unwilling either to fight to save their relationship or to put the final nail in the lid of its coffin, so the marriage just kept lingering on, getting colder and colder until it reached the heat death of the universe.

In all honesty she should have seen it coming with the way things were. But somehow, in spite of everything, it still shocked her when she came home early from her business trip and found Jack in bed with that woman. She felt the cold that infested her married life become a tangible thing that coiled around her bones and froze her solid. Maybe it was seeing the fantasy of the marriage she had once believed in so strongly shattering apart at the seams. Maybe it was the shock of realizing that Jack could keep something like this from her, that she wasn't so all knowing as the omniscient narrators in her books. Maybe it was that she wished she was the one in bed with the pretty red-head with the sea blue eyes instead of Jack. Whatever it was, she just stood there in the bedroom doorway, gaping like an idiot until the paramours realized they had gained an audience. Jack of course had started bending over backwards in an attempt to explain himself, that it was a mistake, he was drunk, it had been so long since they’d been intimate together and nothing like this would ever happen again. Through it all she had just stood there, letting his words wash over her like waves, while she was as silent as stone.

Something about her silence must have got to him. His justifications turned to accusations, that if she put more time into their relationship things would be different, that she was too cold and distant, that she cared more about her bloody books then she ever did about him. And yet she was still silent, because what should she say? That he was right? That their marriage was a mistake and they had just wasted eight years of their lives together on a thing that was doomed from the start? As the silence stretched on, his shouting grew louder and louder, with all the old wounds and fresh angers being thrown at her like knives, aimed to maim and kill. Somewhere between a barb about how no one could ever really love a cold-fish like her, and a pretty little vase that had been a wedding present being shattered against the far wall, the red-head had grabbed her clothes and made her escape. After that there was little to do but follow her example and set out into the night as well, with Jack’s screams fading behind her and all the things she had never said still stuck in her throat. 

Now here she was, walking the nighttime streets with nowhere to go to and no destination in mind. She’d at least had the forethought to throw some of her belongings into an old suitcase and to grab the first coat she could find before taking off into the night. On reflection, she wishes she had picked a better coat. The one she had grabbed had once been a white trench coat, but had become a smoggy grey with age and the stains that come with life in the city. One sleeve has been patched at the elbow with a piece of bright green fabric, while the other has a cuff that is frayed and stained with ink. In her pocket there is a beat-up looking pocket book of ghost stories that she is reading for inspiration for her next book The Phantom of Imogen Cain. Well, if her personal life has any effect on the lives of her characters as critics have claimed, it looks like poor Imogen will be coming out of an incredibly dysfunctional relationship. 

She realizes she never really thought about how empty the streets are this late at night, or early in the morning as the case may be. Winter had come early this year, so while it was still only November, cold winds that could cut right through a person blew down the street, and a thin dusting of snow covered the ground. 

The silence is almost all encompassing, with only the sound of her heels clicking against the ground and the squeaking wheel of her suitcase for company. It’s the kind of silence that leaves your imagination looking for things to fill the void. Is that the sound of a second set of footsteps following after you, or just the echoes of your own? Did you just hear that sound, the one like razor sharp claws being dragged along the concrete, or was it all just in your head? She catches herself doing it now, working herself up and slowly becoming convinced she's not as alone tonight as she thinks she is. She can’t stop herself from looking over her shoulder, scanning the streets for movement, maybe Jack chasing after her with more harsh words, maybe something else entirely, but of course they’re empty of all life. There are only the shadows behind her, nothing more. Shivering, she picks up her pace and walks into the nearest subway station. 

She uses her metro pass to board the station, needing a place to sit and think. She’s afraid that if she is still for too long all her fears, rages and regrets will catch up with her. Once they do they’ll consume her, like all the fiends and aberrations that lurk within the darkest shadows of the night, or do at least within the pages of her books. Sometimes when she’s trying to come up with story ideas she goes to the subway and rides the rails. Listening to the shrieks and creaks and groans and rumbles of the tracks beneath the train. Sitting on the dirty and frayed seats, sometimes so worn through that you can see the metal beneath them, and watching the vacant eyed people move along, wondering what horrors could lurk within their everyday lives. Of course, at this time of night the subway station is as empty as everywhere else. The trains also aren’t moving on a schedule she’s used to, so it will be another fifteen minutes before another arrives at the station. Until then she’s alone with the flickering lights and the distant dripping of far off water. Usually the old subway station is a source of inspiration for her, but tonight it just seems to make everything worse. 

This isn’t what she needs to be thinking about now. She needs to figure out where she is going, not about unseen monsters that lurk in the dark and go after those foolish enough to be out alone at night. She knows she can’t go back to her mother. For as long as there had been problems in her marriage her mother had always taken Jack’s side. She could hear her mother’s voice echoing in her head even now: Marriage is a sacred act, and you’ll bring shame on us if you can’t make it work. Maybe if you spent a little more quality time with him instead of writing those dreadful stories of yours you wouldn't have such a hard time accepting things the way they are. Her mother was a wasp who would sting you the second you made a move against her. Still, she had tried and tried to deal with it, to appease everyone, but now she was tired. She was tired of all the anger and sorrow and lies and bullshit that was her relationship with Jack, creating a storm of rage and loss that sucked her down into a pit of despair.

At first she doesn't realize it is happening. It just seems like something that must be happening in her head, the silence that has filled her up inside slowly seeping out into the rest of the world. Suddenly she realizes she can no longer hear the far off water, or the buzzing lights, or the dozens of other little sounds that usually echo through the subway station. In fact she can no longer even hear her own breath or the beat of her heart. It was just… silence. She raises her hand up to her ear and tries snapping her fingers one, two, three, four, five times, but nothing happens. She tries to call out, but no sound passes her lips. 

She looks around the station for some sign of what has happened, of what could have possibly caused something like this, and that is when she notices the door that leads back to the stairs out of the station. The lights had been on when she came down, but now they’re all out. Beyond the doorway is only darkness, the kind of pitch black void you only see those cloud covered nights when there is no moon and even the stars seem to have burned out. She stands in the silence and finds that no matter how hard she tries she cannot pull her eyes away from the door. 

And then the darkness moves. 

It’s a small movement at first, a small ripple she can almost convince herself is only her eyes playing tricks on her. But then the darkness start to seep through the doorway towards her. It’s a living shadow that slithers and writhes and she can feel its malevolence, feel its desire to drag her down into the dark, never to be seen again.

Her fight or flight reaction must have kicked in then because one minute she’s frozen in horror as the mass oozes towards her, the next she is hurling herself down onto the tracks. Her knees sting as they hit the ground, and she can see the accumulated grime of untold years already beginning to cling to the formerly white fabric of her coat. Then she is on her feet again, sprinting for the comparatively comfortable darkness of the tunnel. A glance over her shoulder shows the shadows wrapping around the bag she left on the platform above. Where the darkness touches the fabric it almost seems to wither and fade. Then she’s in the tunnel itself and the monster is out of sight, but she doesn't stop running. She cannot stop running.

The thing must be following her though because no matter how fast she runs or how badly her lungs burn, the silence stays with her. What’s more, the natural darkness of the tunnel is growing colder, as if the shadows are infecting it and claiming it as their own. Though no sounds can be heard a strange scent starts to fill the air, like tar on a hot summer day and a grassy field after a thunderstorm all rolled into one. The smell becomes so strong she can taste it in the back of her throat.

The thing is impossible, a contradiction, a literal monster come to swallow her whole. It is a creature that draws on all the anxieties she has ever used when writing her stories, and yet cannot be fully defined by any of them. Sometimes you cannot find the right words to describe the things you truly fear. Sometimes those words don’t even exist. But in spite of all the uncertainty, all the unknowable factors spinning around her head, somehow she knows, she knows that every moment it is getting closer, that any second now it will catch up with her and when it does, she will be gone forever. 

The fear and silence are so overwhelming that she almost doesn’t notice the light coming towards her. At first she thinks it is her salvation, the next station on the line, but then she realizes the light is coming at her way too fast. What's more, now that she is paying attention, she realizes that with every step she can feel vibrations moving up her legs, shaking her bones more strongly with every passing moment. A train is coming. It’s coming right towards her. 

Desperately, she glances around the tunnel for somewhere, anywhere she can hide until the danger has passed. Then she sees it, a little alcove off to the side of the tracks. In the dark it would have been invisible, but the train is close enough now that it lights up the whole tunnel in an eerie glow. She wonders if the driver can see her now, disheveled and desperate and so, so afraid. She wonders if he can see the thing behind her, and what nightmares are revealed when light shines directly on it. As she throws herself to the side she cannot help but look behind herself again. In the inky blackness she swears for a second that she sees a pair of glowing silver eyes. 

As she hits ground in the alcove the vibrations reach a crescendo making it feel like her teeth might be shaken right out of her skull, and the wind whips by at lighting speed. A sharp pain flashes across the palm of her left hand. The spreading wetness and smell of iron in the air tell her that blood has been spilt. She lies there in the dirt shaking, the fear and exhaustion leaving her unable to move. Slowly, so very slowly, sound begins to creep back into the world. It starts with her own heaving breaths and spreads to the sound of the train moving off into the distance. Whatever the shadow was, it must not have been able to get out of the way in time. Maybe, just maybe she is safe now

“Are you alright Dearie?”

She jolts up and spins around. She had entirely missed the old man amidst the natural darkness and the grime of the alcove. From the old pile of blankets scattered about him it looked like he had been planning to sleep here for the night. Now he stared at her from his dark corner with a look of concern on his face.

“Listen,” he continued on ‘“I know the tunnels seem like a good place to set up camp in this weather, what with the way they keep the wind at bay, but if you can’t get the train schedule through your head, and time your runs, it’s a death trap. If you’d been a moment slower that train there would have splatted you all over the tracks nice and good. Now, the fine people of this fair city may not care much if homeless folks freeze out on the streets, but I‘ve seen enough of us end that way to tell you it isn’t a pretty way to go. You’d probably be better off at the women’s shelter down on Elm Street. It's not really safe for a lass like you to be alone in these parts, if you catch my drift.”

For the second time tonight she doesn't know what to say. Her bag is gone, her clothes are disheveled, her left hand is bleeding like a bitch. She just ran for her life through the subway tunnels, and now this man is just casually chatting on about how she should go to a homeless shelter. As if something so mundane could even cross her mind after her life had turned into a nightmare straight out of one of her own stories. 

“What… I… didn’t you see it?” for the first time tonight her voice actually works, rattling out of her chest in a rasping whisper. 

The man blinks at her. “See what?”

She looks at the empty tracks, then back to the man. “There was a thing. A thing in the dark. It was… I thought something was chasing me.”

“There’s nothing there Dearie,” The man says. “Trust me, if anything had been after you the train would have hit it dead on, and we’d be able to see the right mess that gets left behind after that sort of thing. It’s all splatters of blood, shards of bone and entrails scattered across the rails. It was probably just the dark, love. It plays tricks on the mind sometimes. No, you get a move on and get to the next station before another train comes around, there ain’t enough room here for us both to camp out. And you check out that women’s shelter, you hear? Trust me, it’s for the best.”

Not knowing what else to do, she steps back out into the tunnel and runs all the way to the next station. While it's dark and eerie as it was before, she can now hear the water dripping and the echoing of her footsteps as she moves. She reaches the station and pulls herself out into the light. She sprints up the stairs, taking the steps two at a time until she is back at street level, feeling the fresh air on her face and watching as the first rays of dawn’s light creep over the horizon. 

Has all this just been in her head? Her mind playing tricks on her after witnessing the life she’d known come to an end? In a way it sort of makes sense. The silence that came with the shadow echoed her own inability to speak in the wake of the end of her relationship with Jack. As for everything else, well, she was a horror writer, and this sort of thing did seem like something that could have been summoned up from the darker parts of her imagination. Christ, she could see the tagline now: Woman walking the streets at night realizes that there are darker things in the shadows than her own failed marriage. And really, what's more realistic? That she had somehow let the stress get to her, or that monsters were real? Honestly, what sort of horror writer was still afraid of the dark? She was an idiot. She had let her imagination get away from her. She panicked, lost all her luggage, and almost got hit by a goddamned train! Now she was an utter mess who had been mistaken for being homeless, which come to think of it she actually was since she couldn’t see Jack letting her keep the house. Finally, to top it all off, bloodstains had now joined the ink stains on her sleeve, so the coat was probably a write-off of this little endeavor as well. 

She leans up against the wall of the subway station and takes a few slow, deep breaths as she thinks things through. On the bright side, her wallet is still in her coat pocket, so she’s not out of cash at least. She figures she’ll get a motel room for now, maybe head back to the subway later tomorrow, or she guesses it’s today now, and try to find her suitcase in the lost and found. As for the rest of her life, well, she’ll just have to figure that out as she goes along. She notices that the sun has just begun to rise, setting the sky ablaze with fire. Red sky in the morning, sailors take warning. But nothing before her could be worse than what she had just come from, so what the hell has she got to lose? 

Slowly, she takes the ring from her pocket one last time. It’s such a small, plain thing. Who knew it could cause such grief and misery. In one swift motion she throws it over her shoulder. She listens to the plink, plink, plink of the ring hitting the ground behind her and rolling away. Without looking back, she walks off into the sunrise of a new day. And as she walks, she fails to notice the shadow that detaches from the wall behind her, silently trailing in her wake.


End file.
